Author
Topic: Your biggest gaming addiction

Every now and again, a game comes along that swallows you up entirely. Mine wasn't actually an MMO or even an RPG. It was a mod for the HL1 engine called Natural Selection. Looking back that game took giant chunks out of my free time, and while I wont say I regret it because it had a mostly fun community and I had some good times with those guys and gals, the realisation of how much of my time it actually consumed is pretty scary.

This gen it's getting wrapped up in games that are more or less open world with awesomely realized environments. Games like Red Dead or Batman or Ass Creed. I just love exploring, seeing what's there and finding worthwhile secrets.

When I was younger I'd play Twisted Metal 2 or Risk (ps1) endlessly. But I'd pipe my VCR to the stereo and listen to eps of MST3K while I played!

Before that: Tie Fighter, Mechwarrior 2, Sim City endlessly listening to music at the same time. The alternative station back then had a awesome latenight show I'd jam to called the industrial zone hosted by ZOLTAR THE BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET

Neverwinter Nights 1. Played a rolelplaying server and basically treated it like a second life. Stopped playing that back in '07, and have tried getting back into it intermittently, but its never the same.

The only games I ever played non-stop were old arcade games, Pac-Man, Defender, Tempest, especially Tempest, I could play that game until I got bored, plus great thing is for all intensive purposes there wasn't a finish

I don't think anything will ever trump the original Disgaea addiction I had back in High School. Hundreds of consecutive hours on that one game alone, probably thousands if you count the time spent total on La Pucelle, D1, D2, Makai Kingdom, and Phantom Brave (still only counting High School; not miscellaneous time past that spent on the remakes). Not even WoW created that kind of OCD gameplay for me when I discovered it in college (and that was one of the many factors that gave me so much trouble passing classes). Keep in mind I don't speak of any of this reverently; I actually wish to never sink that deep into the gaming sea again.

Probably my biggest 'addiction' at present is Civilization V. I'm naturally nocturnal in a place where most stuff shuts down around 11ish; so there's really nothing for me to do during the wee hours when I'm too stressed to write or work on tabletop projects. Civ gives me something to micromanage and enjoy in a good 4-5 hour burst that helps the morning pass smoothly.

I have almost certainly played close to 2000 hours of Baldur's Gate 2 in my lifetime. I think that comes out to close to 3 months or something of my life having been spent playing that game.

Behind that, it has to be Torchlight, which I have easily played more than any game since it came out. Heck I actually play it more than D3 still. I could not even begin to explain why. Something about it just pushes the right buttons in my brain.

I have invested a disgusting amount of time into each of those. A few years ago I would have also mentioned Pokemon, Final Fantasy, Tales Of, or other games, but those three are the ones that are most current and the ones I keep going back to.